Do the Roar... ing Stag Hut

Through some convenient rostering shenanigans, I ended up with a free Saturday. So, instead of catching up on chores or other such productive pursuits, it was time for a tramp.
In our usual fashion, the destination was one that caused the least trouble for my licence-less companion - in this case Roaring Stag Hut.

I was a bit surprised to arrive at the end of Putara Rd in the early afternoon to find an abundance of cars parked up.After adding my own car to the collection, we headed of down the track.
Part way up the track, Cody and I were discussing how it looked different, settling on the conclusion that we had become so used to seeing the area during or shortly after rain, that seeing it sunny and dry was quite unusual to us. The track was littered with bright yellow-brown leaves and golden sunlight filtered down through the forest canopy.

As it always is, the climb up the ridge from the swingbridge was a slog that pretty much never lets up until the track begins to level out among the spindly beech forest and sparse undergrowth at the top of the ridge. A couple of hours, and much sweat later, we had arrived the track junction, which was partially blocked by a fallen tree.

Taking the left-hand track, we then headed south toward the hut. Coming down off the ridge, the track meets a picturesque stream that it then follows for a distance before crossing it shortly before the hut.

The track contains fairly frequent patches of boot-top deep mud, but is mercifully flat, aside from brief steep up-and-down bits to cross the two streams before the hut.

As an interesting aside, the track sticks very close to the true right of the stream, veering away slightly before crossing that same stream. The Topo50 maps, however, show the track being some distance from the streams true left bank. Memory-Map shows a track (allegedly from DOC data) to the true right of stream so I had assumed this was correct and LINZ were wrong. My GPS data instead show that the LINZ track is correct - the maps actually have the stream in the wrong place.

Second stream crossing

Shortly after crossing the first stream, a second stream, shallower than the first, is crossed. It's perfectly possible to cross both streams without getting wet, although you could fill your boots if you really wanted to.

We arrived at the hut to find a large family group sitting around a fire. Lucky for us, as children go, they were fairly tolerable.
With plenty of daylight we were able to hang out around the river, eat cheese and crackers, cook and eat dinner, all before sunset.

Late evening Ruamahanga River

After a very restless night I was woken from the one patch of decent sleep I had by the sound of rustling sleeping bags and flatulence. Assuming it was still the middle of the night, I was surprised to roll over and see daylight through the window.
The weather had regressed to the mean, and a familiar misty rain was drifting down the valley.

According to the hut book, some NZDA volunteers had given the hut a though cleaning about a year back, so the hut was in particularly good nick. The same can't be said for the longdrop, which, although surprisingly clean and free of spiders, did not have a particularly long drop. Disturbingly, daylight was seeping in below the toilet, courtesy of bizarre opening to the shit pit next to the crap shack.

Longdrop quirks aside, Roaring Stag is in a fantastic location, situated in a clearing above the Ruamahunga river. In fact, many of the comments in the hut books were something along the lines of "Great spot!" and "nice place!" which are simultaneously both accurate and cromulent yet woefully inadequate descriptions of this fine place. But hey, I couldn't describe it any better and I'm not limited to a small box in a DOC hut book.
Also in the book was an entry from a party that included tramping luminary and writer Shaun Barnett and Wilderness Magazine editor Alastair Hall.

Eventually we plodded out into the rain, the track now looking comfortably familiar glistening in the rain, the golden hues of the first day long gone.

The trees seemed a particularly bright shade of green and the bird life was particularly active. The song of grey warblers and squeaks of fantails and possibly riflemen followed us all the way from hut to roadend. The rain had pretty much given up by the time we got to the swingbridge, and the remainder of the walk was a pleasant amble alongside the Mangatainoka River to the carpark.

Herepai again... again

Te Puia Hut in the Kawekas is a pretty neat place: a scenic, easy walk up the Mohaka River; near-by hot springs, beautiful location. In short, well worth the trip up from the Hutt Valley.
Such was the plan, until a transport mishap scuttled those plans and a well overdue to return to Te Puia was shit-canned.

The natural alternative was - of course - none other than Ol' Faithful, Herepai Hut.
As someone quite astutely pointed out "why Herepai? Roaring stag is way nicer." Not wrong, but Herepai is somewhat of a tradition, so Herepai it was.

Unusually for this time of year, there was not even the slightest hint of rain. Of course that made absolutely no difference to the perma-bog at the start of the track, which seemingly goes from strength to strength.

The walk up the valley was as pleasant as ever, the swing bridges still swingy, the scenery scenic and the track, um, tracky?
I never tire of the scenery on this track, and the golden dappled sunlight made it even better (and was also a nice change from the varying degrees of rain we usually encounter). We made fairly good time on the first section of walk, and as custom dictates, stopped at the 2nd swing bridge for a quick break before the hill awaiting us on the other side.

  Being the unfit office chair potato that I am, this part of the track wasn't exactly a walk in the park (despite technically being exactly that), but again we made good time to the Roaring Stage-Herepai track junction. It was around this point that we encountered a few people heading down to Roaring Stag (ol' faithful comes through again).

 And so began the easy final stretch to the hut. Along the way, Cody picked up a small log off tha track and carried it for the next half hour it took to reach the hut. We reached the hut after about 3.5 hours-or-so.
Our initial plan once at the hut was to go up to Herepai peak and back for the views, but the peak was shrouded in a thick fug of cloud by the time we got to hut so this plan was abandoned in favour of an afternoon of cards. Unfortunately, I'd left the cards behind.

Once again there was piss all dry wood around, so we attempted to scrounge up some additional branches and such. Despite our minor success at wood gathering (innuendo? Maybe at a stretch), the fire itself turned out to be a bit of a failure, and never got hot enough to make the hut cosy. Not even the two hunters that turned up later had much luck with it.
On the plus side, the hut was home to a hunting magazine from 2012 which contained an article - and I kid you not - about "boning birds." The article featured such gems as "I will try to teach you the fine art of boning..." "...using your fingers to slide the meat down the bone..." "...flip the bird over onto it's front..." and it gets better: "Don't be put off boning birds as it's not that daunting once you have started" ... "...never be in a hurry and you will achieve a far better job." But perhaps the best part was the sign-off at the end, which simply read "Happy boning!"

After a good nights sleep, we left the hut at about 10am. The weather was once again lovely and the walk out pretty much the same as the walk in. Except, you know, in reverse.
We reached the road-end after 3 hours.

Roaring Stag and a Thunderstorm

There is perhaps nothing more effective at ensuring stubbornness as someone telling you they don't think you should be doing something. And so it was with this tramp.
Repeated warnings about how unambiguously rubbish the weather was forecast to  be served only to strengthen our resolve to continue with our plans.
So, at around 1pm on Saturday 29th May, we headed off from the Putara road-end toward Roaring Stag Hut. The notorious perma-bog at the start of the track was at full strength due to recent rainfall, but the walk up the valley was largely uneventful. In a couple of places the swollen river was within a meter of the track and the tiny little creeks all over the place were bigger than we'd ever seen them, but for the first 50-60 minutes the weather wasn't all that bad (for the Tararua's anyway).

Inevitably, it wasn't long until the shit hit the fan, and about 20-30 minutes into the climb up to the track junction (and just after a drink break), the wild blue yonder (which was actually a dark grey by this point), proceeded to rain heavily on our trudging, polypropylene-clad parade. Then came the thunder and the lightning.
It was cool for a while, but the unrelenting downpour soon had our clothing and spirits well and truly dampened. Or rather, saturated.

We hoofed it up the rest of the hill, reaching the junction at around 3:30. After commenting on the new DOCware sign, we ploughed our way down toward the hut. The flatter parts of the track along the top had extensive surface flooding, though this was largely only ankle-deep so was barely an issue with leather boots and gaiters. More of the same sludge and flooding at the bottom where the track follows a stream.

We slowed down only for the two stream crossings near the hut. The streams were extremely swollen (up to the middle of my thigh at times) and flowing very fast.
We reached the hut just before 5pm, and there was much rejoicing. By this point, our bottom, non-rain protected, halves were thoroughly soaked through, making the changing into warm, dry clothes the most joyous it has ever been.

This time around, I found myself acutely aware of the amount of spider webs this hut is covered in. The underside of the verandah roof is covered in a thick mat of the creepy stuff, it's seriously bizarre. Other than that, the 11 year old hut is in great nick, and became nice and toasty pretty quickly after getting the fire going.
The evening was full of warm food, hot drinks, card games and (for me) a cracking headache. The night was somewhat restless, constantly wondering whether the weather we could hear was rain, wind, the river roaring or some combination thereof, midnight contemplations on river levels and how sodden we may or may not get the next day. Plus a pig screaming at some ungodly hour and the inevitable need to take a leak in the middle of the night.

Regardless, a good sleep was had eventually, and we woke up feeling (at least a little bit) rejuvenated the next day, with the lack of rain putting us in good spirits for the walk out. After a morning brew, wood gathering, and cleanup, we left the hut at 9:30.

Morning view from the hut

The streams were down significantly from yesterday, the first one not even getting water inside out boots, and the second only mid-calf height at it's deepest point.
The track was drier as well. Still boggy as all hell, but the surface flooding had mostly dissipated.

First stream after crossing

Second stream

Boggy track

The walk back up to track junction was trouble-free and as scenic as ever, with only one or two spots of rain and even the occasional glimpse of blue sky. After yesterdays shit storm, it was nice to be able to enjoy our surroundings.

We reached the track junction after just under two hours at about 11:20, where we stopped for a snack and some water before lumping our way down the hill into the Mangatainoka valley.

New DOCware at the track junction

After crossing the swing bridge we stopped for another drink and a kit-kat before taking a cruisey stroll out to the roadend which we reached at 1:20 (3hrs 50 mins after leaving the hut)